Pushing Through Prejudice

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Part I: Roseau Valley School (R.V.S)

Thumping sounds echo through the polystyrene ceiling tiles, and my grade nine English teacher rolls her eyes. I feel my heart rate increasing and look down at my desk, trying to act like nothing is happening. But I know what is coming next: “It’s the Natives again,” says a classmate. Everyone laughs. I smile too — my desperate attempt to fit in and act unbothered, but inside I feel embarrassed and ashamed. The teacher calls the principal’s office through the intercom. “They are on the roof again.”

At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back now, I wonder what the teacher meant by “they?”

This is just one of the memories I have of growing up in Dominion City, a small farm town in southern Manitoba that my family moved to when I was in grade two. There weren’t too many Brown kids like me. There’s a good chance my family was the only Indigenous family living in town at the time.

My childhood was fairly normal. I felt just like any other kid, doing things kids love to do: biking around town, playing road hockey, and jumping on the trampoline. It wasn’t until I began grade seven that I felt a divide. This is when I realized I was different from the kids in my town. I realized I was “Native.”

Living in a small town, I didn’t really have an option of who my friends were. Normally, kids are friends with the other kids around their age. By the time we hit puberty, the kids I grew up with seemed to lose their innocence, and so did I. Was it parental influence? Hormones? Whatever it was, making “Native jokes” became the norm. They knew that these jokes were not okay, but to justify their actions, they would say, “You are different from the other Natives,” or “I am not racist — it’s just a joke,” or simply, “Just kidding.”

I found myself at a crossroads: stop hanging out with these kids or act like it didn’t bother me, even though it did. Over time, their behaviour started to rub off on me, and I began to act the same way. I would make racist jokes just because I wanted to feel like I belonged. Ultimately, all it did was leave me feeling ashamed to be Indigenous, a feeling that I am still trying to recover from.

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Part II: Ginew School

Rewind quite a few years: I’m four years old, and my family moved from Winnipeg to Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation, which everybody just calls Roseau. My parents wanted a change from the big city that they lived in for many years. My dad said he felt all his stress dissipate the moment he stepped out of the vehicle and realized he no longer lived in a city, “It was a ton of weight lifted off of my shoulders,” he said, “I felt like I could breathe again.”

I began kindergarten at Ginew School. Monday mornings began with a Pow Wow in the gymnasium. We ended the week the same way. When I think of these memories, I still hear the sounds of the beaters hitting the deer hide drum bouncing off the gym walls as the dancers in their regalia followed the pulsing beat.

This was my first taste of elementary school, so I had nothing to compare it to. My memory is faint, but I recall after arriving at school every morning, we’d eat, brush our teeth, learn the alphabet, and learn how to spell our names — all things I already knew how to do. Looking back, I realize this was not an ordinary elementary school. In addition to the ceremonies and the curriculum being too easy for me, the school was also underfunded.

In a CBC article from 2018, TD Bank’s former chief economist says on-reserve schools in Manitoba receive an estimated one-third less funding than public schools. I was in kindergarten in 1996, and in 2025 this is still an issue.

Trevor Chartrand, 53, has been a teacher at Ginew School for 10 years. He says the school lacks computers and books due to being underfunded. “They are at least ten years behind, and a lot of that comes down to lack of funding,” said Chartrand.

Along with lack of funding, Chartrand says teacher retention is an issue. He says Ginew School struggles to keep teachers because of their frustration with lack of parent involvement and severe absenteeism. “Sometimes it is mid-year and the teachers will leave. They end up having to use educational assistants to fill their place,” said Chartrand.

Chartrand says Roseau needs to start a program where they put more community members into education. “More than half of the teachers carpool from Winnipeg daily,” said Chartrand, “it is not sustainable.”

In a perfect world, Roseau would have more than enough employment opportunities, not just for teachers but for everybody. According to the 2021 census conducted by Statistics Canada, Roseau has a population of 564, with an unemployment rate of 38.12 per cent.

When I drive through Roseau, I see boarded-up vacant homes, overgrown lawns, litter, and graffiti. The same thought comes to mind every time, “How do people live like this?” But the answer is quite simple; they are survivors, survivors of generational trauma.

A large percentage of people in Roseau are still stuck on the lowest tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. They are working on meeting their basic needs like air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and reproduction. Once these basic needs are met, they can start working on their second tier of needs, which includes safety, employment, resources, health, and property.

Difficulty meeting these needs stems from the generational trauma Indigenous Peoples are still fighting to overcome. Yet, on social media posts involving Indigenous issues, you will see comments saying things like it was so long ago — just get over it. The truth is it wasn’t that long ago. The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996. For reference, that’s the year I started kindergarten.

Residential schools negatively impacted my family. My grandmother and grandfather, both passed away because of heart complications due to alcoholism. They were residential school survivors and would be in their 70s if they were still alive. Every single Indigenous person has been impacted by residential schools in one way or another.

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Part III: High School

When Grade nine begins, I get new classmates from the town of Emerson and Roseau, since R.V.S is the only high school in the region. The kids from Emerson fit in just fine, but I can’t say the same for the kids from Roseau. They are in a new town, a new school, and are no longer surrounded by people who look or talk like them.

Note: This is 2005 and Indigenous culture is not celebrated or talked about like it is in 2025. But even in present day, Indigenous youth still often feel detached within the public school system.

Leeandra McKay, 18, graduated high school at Miles Macdonell Collegiate in 2024. Her mother is originally from Roseau. Prior to graduating, McKay attended primary school at Norquay School in the North Point Douglas neighbourhood in Winnipeg. McKay says Norquay School is predominantly Indigenous, and she noticed a change in culture when switching schools. “At Norquay, the walls were filled with Indigenous art and murals. When I switched schools (to Miles Macdonell Collegiate), I felt so out of place,” said McKay.

A 2013 study about successful transition to post-secondary for Indigenous students led by University of Toronto Professor Jean-Paul Restoule found that Indigenous youth who leave their reserve to attend school face racism and experience separation from their culture. This can have a major effect on why Indigenous youth struggle to complete high school. Though this study is out of Ontario, I think it is relevant to Manitoba too.

I thought having more Indigenous students in my class while starting my first year of high school would be a positive for me, but it wasn’t. I felt so different from other Indigenous kids. I considered myself “whitewashed” because I was surrounded by white kids from grade two on. I had been separated from my culture for far too long, something that was foreign to the students from Roseau. I found myself in a predicament. I am Indigenous, but I acted like my white friends, and I was embarrassed of my skin. I eventually left R.V.S.

In grade 11, I had the option to sign up for a vocational course at W.C. Miller Collegiate in Altona, Manitoba. I took a vocational course to become a chef. I was in a completely new environment with many different ethnicities under one roof. Yet, everyone got along and was treated equally. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel ashamed of my own skin. I decided that I would graduate from there. It was one of the easiest decisions I have ever had to make.

An APTN article from 2021 says in Manitoba only 50 per cent of Indigenous students complete high school “on time.” The average for non-Indigenous students in Manitoba is 90 per cent.

My grade nine class had 11 Indigenous students. Each year after that, the number of Indigenous students dwindled down. In 2009, the year I graduated, R.V.S. only had two Indigenous students graduate.

The same APTN article says the Winnipeg School Division began offering Cree and Ojibwe language classes at two of their schools, and from 2018 to 2021, they have seen an increase of 35 per cent of Indigenous students graduate and attend post-secondary education. A few years after I graduated, Roseau began to see a positive trend with high school graduates as well.

My mother’s cousin Josephine Hartin née Nelson, 59, is the chairperson of the Roseau River Anishinaabe First Nation Trust, and vice-principal of Ginew School. She says a big part of this upward trend is the partnership with Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre Inc. (MFNERC) and Manitoba First Nations School Systems (MFNSS), which started in 2012.

The Government of Canada’s official website says MFNERC provides services for teachers, such as professional development and pedagogical support. Their goal is to establish a strong system and improve the quality of education on reserves. “It helps that we finally have proper funding and proper resources to help our students,” said Hartin.

MFNERC provides resources to nine Indigenous communities and supports 2,200 Indigenous students throughout Manitoba. Hartin says this year’s graduating class at R.V.S. will have 20 graduates, and 11 of them are from Roseau, and the 2026 class expects to have 24 graduates, with 18 from Roseau.

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Part IV: Post-secondary

According to Statistics Canada, only 37 per cent of Indigenous Peoples in Canada complete post-secondary education, compared to 72 per cent of non-Indigenous people. Twenty-three per cent of on-reserve Indigenous Peoples complete post-secondary school.

Many years after I completed high school, I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to enroll in the Creative Communications program at Red River College Polytechnic (RRC Polytech). I wanted to break the cycle and be the first child of my parents to further my education. I had been working in the food industry for years, and I decided it was time to follow my passion for photography.

I met with an academic advisor, and shared my love for cameras and content creation. He suggested Creative Communications, but he warned me the program is very mentally demanding, and it comes with a constant, heavy workload. As challenging as it has been, the chance to be a positive role model for Indigenous youth keeps me going.

The summer leading up to term one was very stressful. I looked to my reserve to get funding, and the first time I was denied. I began losing hope, so I applied for a Manitoba Student Loan. In the second semester, I was finally accepted for funding from the Post-Secondary Student Support Program (PSSSP), a government-funded program that helps Indigenous students financially while in post-secondary school. They cover tuition costs, along with a monthly student allowance. The program offers mental health resources as well.

Skyla Sellner, 24, the project manager of PSSSP, says there are currently 68 students from Roseau enrolled in the program. She says taking away the financial burden for students has had a positive effect on completion rates. “Eighty per cent of students enrolled have completed post-secondary thus far with the help of PSSSP,” said Sellner.

She says education is one of the most important things anyone can have. “Just go for it; even if you can’t contain funding, no one can ever take away your education; it will all be worth it in the end,” said Sellner. She is enrolled in PSSSP through Swan Lake First Nation and is currently halfway through her Bachelor of Science with a Minor in Psychology at the University of Manitoba (U of M).

Leeandra McKay is another student currently enrolled in PSSSP. She is in her first year of Bachelor of Fine Arts at the U of M. McKay says she strives to be an author. “What motivated me was my dad never attended post-secondary or even graduated high school, and my mom never attended post-secondary, so I made it a priority for myself to pursue an education better than they had,” said McKay.

McKay still lives at home while attending university, but for the youth living on reserves, they have to leave all that they know to pursue an education. This often means being separated from their culture for the first time, which adds another layer of challenge on top of post-secondary school.

A 2021 study by Jaiden Herkimer says only eight per cent of American Indigenous students drop out of post-secondary school because of academic failure. This suggests that there are other factors that are leading Indigenous youth to drop out.

The trustees of Roseau are trying to make the transition from reserve life to city life for their youth attending post-secondary schools as seamless as possible. While leaving your culture and home can still be a struggle, creating a new, comfortable home where you feel at peace can ease the mind and make the post-secondary experience that much easier. The leaders of Roseau are aware of this, and that is why the construction of 939 Chancellor is underway.

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Part V: 939 Chancellor

On November 22, 2024, Paragon Living made an official announcement that will help shape a better future for the Indigenous youth of Roseau. They partnered with Roseau to build a 95-unit apartment complex at 939 Chancellor Drive in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This complex will be owned by Roseau, and 40 per cent of these units will be affordable housing for Roseau community members who decide to pursue post-secondary school.

A Winnipeg Free Press article from 2024 says units occupied by Roseau youth will be 70 per cent of the median market value. These units will include underground parking and internet. It will be less than a block away from transit, and the bus ride to the U of M will only take 10 minutes.

Josephine Hartin first brought this idea to life in 2021, and she and four other trustees of Roseau spent the last four years making it a reality. “There was a lot of convincing to do. The Roseau Band did not want to take a risk, but I had a gut feeling it was the right thing to do,” said Hartin. “I mentioned that there will be a lot of Roseau youth graduating in the coming years; they will need a place to live. I felt that a leap of faith was necessary, and I’m glad I took it.”

The building is estimated to be completed by September 2026. Hartin sees 939 Chancellor as a way to help the future of Roseau. She says it will give the youth a safe place to live while they attend post-secondary school. It will also create an ongoing stream of income for the reserve since 60 per cent of the rooms will be rented out to the public at market value.

Roseau received a $36 million loan in order to build the complex. Hartin says once it is built, it will be worth $40 million. She says there will be a criteria for the students who apply for the apartments, and there will be strict rules in order to keep the apartments in the best shape possible. “I will make sure every single one of the community members knows that this is an investment for Roseau, and you need to look after these apartments, said Hartin. “If any of the rules are broken, you will be evicted.”

She says the memory of her late father, Stanley, inspired her to push forward with this project. Stanley, the former chief of Roseau, has been gone for 30 years. “I credit my dad for his vision and the way he lived his life,” said Hartin. “He helped build 35 homes that people still live in today, and he helped build Ginew School. He died with nothing, and I don’t want that for Roseau.”

As I am writing this, I am weeks shy of graduating from RRC Polytech. I would be lying if I said I did this all on my own. Roseau helped make this possible.

Roseau is just one community, and overcoming the years of trauma that have affected many generations takes time. But looking back from when I was in kindergarten to now, Roseau has taken major leaps forward to give its youth a fighting chance for a better life. Because of this, I am beginning to feel proud of where I come from.